Splash

To splash or not

Hmm... hard question. You want to do an introduction to your product, that is not your product. You can do this with a button that says "Show Introduction". Or maybe you could load it on the front screen the first time the user comes, but then what about public computers and cookies? It is all very hard.

Methods

First page & Cookies

Short description: First page is the splash. You can say skip introduction, and it can optionally remember that via a cookie for this browser.

Q: How to display again?

Link from front page

Short description: Make a prominent introduction link on the front page.

Popup on Front page

Short description: Rather than a separate page, have it part of the front page in a new layer (short for using Javascript and DHTML to open a window) with the splash. Allow it to be closed rather than skipped (same thing really). BUT here is the trick: Cookies still allow you to say no show again, AND users can still click on the navigation they can see behind the window - e.g. log into the site.